CANDRAKĪRTI

Candrakīrti (ca. 600–650 c.e.) is best known as a Madhyamaka-school Indian philosopher and commentator. Little is known of his life, though later Tibetan biographies associate him with the north Indian monastic university of Nālandā. His two major works are the Madhyamakāvatāra (Introduction to Madhyamaka) and Prasannapadā (Clear Words).

The Madhyamakāvatāra is a versified introduction to Madhyamaka thought, organized into ten chapters that correspond to the ten perfections (pāramitā) mastered by Mahāyāna bodhisattvas. The sixth chapter, corresponding to the perfection of wisdom, is the longest and most important. In it, Candrakīrti refutes a variety of Buddhist and non-Buddhist views, and explores the meaning of such basic Buddhist ontological categories as the two truths, no-self, and emptiness.

The Prasannapadā is a prose commentary on the Madhyamakakārikā (Verses on the Middle Way; second century c.e.), Nāgārjuna's foundational Madhyamaka school text. In his commentary, Candrakīrti brilliantly adumbrates Nāgārjuna's critique of philosophical categories, and insists, contrary to his predecessor Bhāvaviveka (ca. 490–570 c.e.) that the Mādhyamika philosopher must avoid syllogistic reasoning, and must defeat opponents solely through drawing out the absurd consequences of their own statements. This methodological approach was later known as Prāsaṇgika (consequentialist) Madhyamaka, in contradistinction to the approach that favored using formal inference to establish Madhyamaka views independently, the Svātantrika.

Candrakīrti was influential among later Indian Mādhyamikas, but achieved his greatest fame in Tibet, where he came to be regarded by many as the Madhyamaka commentator par excellence. He was particularly important for the founder of the Dge lugs (Geluk) tradition, Tsong kha pa (1357–1419), who placed his work at the center of monastic education on Madhyamaka, and made him a thinker whose views are discussed and debated by Tibetan scholars to this day.

Bibliography

Huntington, C. W., and Wangchen, Geshé Namgyal. The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Mādhyamika. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989.

Sprung, Mervyn; Murti, T. R. V.; and Vyas, U. S., trans. Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way: The Essential Chapters from the Prasannapada of Candraklrti. Boulder, CO: Prajñā Press, 1979.

Roger R. Jackson